Jena B.

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I feel fantastic! I'm in a size 14 jeans, 14 dress, L shirts (12-14) and even my feet are a 1/2 size smaller! I'll do my measurements tonight, but DAMN I really feel good! I'm planning a trip to DE in June and I'm sure everyone will be surprised to see my progress. I love to get in front of cameras now! Today I weighed 184.8, which is 35lbs down from surgery day and 50lbs down from consult! Wow...50 freakin pounds. I never thought I'd be able to say that I lost that much weight. I have about 44 lbs to go until I'm at goal, but I'll get there. :-)

I dont ever remember feeling this good about myself. I've been through the depression, the stalls, the anger, regret, hoplessnes...and now 8 weeks later, I can honestly say that this was the best decision of my entire life. I'm 24 lbs lighter than surgery day, 56lbs lighter than my heaviest weight. I feel amazing! I can run without using my inhaler, I can jump without pain in my knees and i dont even sleep with my apnea machine anymore! :-)

Life is good!

Well sorry it's been so long since i was able to write a blog. Monday the 23rd was my surgery. I actually overslept a half hour and I thought I was going to be late. Luckily enough I wasnt. Well in pre-op they wanted me to give a urine sample. HAHAHA yeah right, i'm the most pee-shy person alive. They had to cath me before I went into surgery. OUCH I didnt like that at all> it was ok though because i dont even remember going into the OR.
Out of surgery I had a little trouble keeping my blood pressure stable. It was 83/51 and didnt go up for awhile. I finally was up to walk around about 7pm and again at 1130pm.  I felt pretty good, not too much pain but then again I had a dilauded PCA. That made me SUPER itchy but i'd rather be itchy than in pain. Tuesday morning they took the PCA away from me and had me taking liquid percocet (Roxicet) which didnt do as well as the PCA, so I was in more pain. I walked around some more, but had horrible gas pains that would not go away!! I was discharged Wednesday and my sister picked me up from the hospital.
I came home and slept for most of the day. My mom spent the night with me to make sure I was alright. I never felt nausiated or vomited this entire week.

Today I started puree foods, but actually I had some cottage cheese yesterday. It was so nice to have something besides liquid! Today I had 2T of scrambled egg beaters and a vanilla protein shake which is...EW but i had to drink it. I tried a chocolate one last night that pretty much made me nausiated. I just put a heating pad on my tummy and went to sleep.

The craziest parts of this whole ordeal is that I came home 18lbs heavier (water) than when i went into the hospital which really upset me. I actually started to get mad at myself for having the surgery because I had it to lose weight, not gain it and the water weight was taking FOREVER to fall off. Well i'm happy to say that I am down 20lbs from the day I came home which means I lost all of the water weight PLUS two more pounds in less than a week. Hell...I'll take it!  I was so discouraged that I wasn't losing any weight then BAM it almost happened overnight. My OH family has helped me so much and I;m starting to feel better about this journey. There may be some "bumps" in the road, but eventually I know that in the end it will be completely worth it!

After a ton of tears and worry, liquid diets, protein shakes and a ton of complaining, I was approved yesterday!
I was approved within hours of it being submitted yesterday! I am so happy! I cried on the phone, jumped up and down and thought my knees were going to give out! I am so excited. My date is 2/23/09, the first day of the rest of my life!!!
I'm thrilled!

Grrrrr I could spit bullets right now! Basically last Wednesday, my insurance coordinater told me that she recomends me doing one more month of the dr. supervised diet to try and lose some more weight because I "yo-yo'd". She doesn't feel like I'll be approved if I submit the weights that I have, so we're going to take one of the weights out and replace it with the one that i'll take on Friday.   I'm currently on a clear liquid+protein shake diet. IT IS HELL let me tell you!!!! I'm on day three and I've lost 3 lbs, so that's not that bad. I have to lose at least 7 lbs...so we'll hope and pray that I can do that!
Obviously if I could lose weight easily, I wouldnt be having the surgery done...ya know?
oh, btw....... PITTSBURGH'S GOIN' TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!

Well..I'm in the last 2 weeks of my pre-op diet and as of Dec. 27, 2008, I'm all "high protein, low carb". I figure it will give me a little "boost" on the weight loss because last month, I somehow managed to gain a pound. I dont think the insurance company will look at that and approve me. Breakfast is now a protein shake...mid morning snack- cheese and 2 egg whites...lunch some protein and salad...snack.- an atkins bar...dinner, protein and veggies.  I'm drinking about 72oz of water a day. My sister refered to it as  "carb-detox" but its a lot more than just carbs I've cut. I've put my mind set on things i will be able to eat after surgery, and everything i'm not going to be able to eat, has been cut (sugars, high carbs, caffeine, alcohol). I've been doing good though. My home scale says i've lost about 4lbs since Dec 27, so maybe i'm on the right track. 
I have my chest x-ray and blood work done Sat. morning and my nutrition and psych. eval's done on the 16th. After that, everything is sent to the ins. company and I have to wait to hear something back.

I am in month 5 of my pre-op diet (insurance required) and I've only lost 5 pounds, but trust me, it is 5 pounds proudly lost. At this rate, I would take me seven years to be at my goal weight...not a chance in...yeah you know where I'm going with this...
I work as a Nanny and the family is really worried that I will be out of work for longer than 2 weeks. I'm hoping not. I heal very quickly so I'm hoping that will be an advantage for me. Tell ya what, if I eat one more egg white, I just might turn into a chicken. I'm going through two dozen eggs a week! I need change. At 800 calories a day, 130 for oatmeal is a heck of a lot for just a serving of oatmeal. I'll stick with a 17 calorie egg white.
I've been getting a lot of "You're not big enough for weight-loss surgery" and "You'll be a different person if you have that done".
Well DUH!!! I actually might live to see 50 if I have this surgery done. A lot of people don't understand it's not what is on the outside thats all messed up. Its the inside. Not my personality or anything, but organs and sleep apnea...stuff like that.
Needless to say, I'm getting worried.